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Hostinger vs HostGator: One Web Host Is Much Faster in 2024

Andrés Gánem Andrés GánemWeb Hosting Expert March 01, 2024
March 01, 2024
Hostinger and HostGator are two behemoths in the hosting industry. Boasting affordable, high-performance shared hosting plans for beginners and advanced, state-of-the-art VPS Hosting for experienced users, both hosts make similar promises. But do they deliver similar results?

I wanted to find out for certain which host is better, which is why I ran comprehensive tests and research into both of them. I compared everything from performance, features, and security to customer support and user reviews. All of it with one purpose: to find out for sure which host is worthy of your trust and your money.

To be honest, it wasn’t much of a close fight. In nearly every category, Hostinger showed a significant lead over HostGator. That isn’t to say that the latter isn’t for anyone, but for most users, Hostinger is the clear choice.

So, keep reading to find out exactly how these hosts fared against each other, or sign up for a shared hosting plan with Hostinger today.

1. Plans & Pricing

Hostinger’s Cheap Plans Are Tough for HostGator to Beat

Hostinger offers three cost-effective packages for shared hosting. Even on the most expensive plan – Business – you’d be paying pocket change for hosting a site with Hostinger. The Single plan accommodates one website, whereas the Premium and Business plans offer extra features and enhanced functionality

The top plan, Business, includes 200 GB of SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth allowance, and unlimited databases. You’ll also get a free domain, free SSL, and free daily backups. Unless you’re on an extremely tight budget, this plan is my recommended pick for a good balance of features and pricing.

HostGator is also known for low pricing, but its plans are slightly more expensive than Hostinger’s. HostGator has three shared hosting plans – Hatchling, Baby, and Business – and each offers unmetered bandwidth and storage. That said, HostGator only provides HDD storage. These drives run more slowly than the SSD drives provided with Hostinger.

It’s also worth noting that while Hostinger offers a free domain name for a year with a yearly subcription to the Premium plan or above, HostGator offers the same thing with every one of its plans. If you’re looking for something more advanced, both hosts also offer VPS hosting.

Hostinger offers more storage at nearly every price point. It also offers cheaper plans and better overall performance (more on that below). In the end, there’s really no question, Hostinger offers better value overall.

2. Features

Hostinger Offers a More User-Friendly Control Panel

Both Hostinger and HostGator come with the features you’d expect if you’re new to hosting. If you’re especially interested in WordPress, both hosts come with specialized plans for WordPress hosting, which include easy installations, custom plugins, and performance-enhancing tools.

For all-purpose hosting, HostGator uses the classic cPanel, which is the industry-standard dashboard for managing your hosting environment. Meanwhile, Hostinger offers its proprietary hPanel. Not only is Hostinger’s hPanel a lot more intuitive and user-friendly, but it can also do just about anything that cPanel can.

Once again though, Hostinger takes the lead thanks to its unique and versatile tools. If you want to host a custom website, Hostinger’s Website Builder is an amazing tool for creating captivating sites. Plus its use of AI technology can ensure that you optimize your site for SEO and maximum conversion and retention.

If you’re new to hosting, you might be looking for one-click WordPress installers and website builders. Both HostGator and Hostinger will meet your requirements there.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the features offered by both hosts:

Hostinger HostGator
Hosting types Shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS, cloud hosting, reseller hosting Shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS, reseller hosting, dedicated servers
Free domain name Only in the Premium plan and up
Free SSL
Number of websites 1 – 100 1 – Unlimited
Storage 50 GB – 200 GB SSD 10 GB – Unlimited HDD
Bandwidth 100 GB – Unlimited Unlimited
Control panel hPanel cPanel
Free CDN Only on the Business plan Only on the Business plan
Email accounts 1 – 100 Unlimited
Money-back guarantee 30 days 30 days

3. Performance

Hostinger is Faster and More Reliable

Shared hosting slices a server into individual accounts; they’re separate, but share the same underlying server resources between them. There are sometimes performance problems on shared hosting when one site starts to consume resources that its neighbors need.

There’s no way of guarding against this, but HostGator does refer to “low-density servers” on WordPress plans. I’m inferring that it means it limits the number of customers per server, and if so, that should help with your site’s speed and performance. Unfortunately, there’s no real detail to go on.

Hostinger offers plenty of tools to help boost performance, such as LiteSpeed web servers and the associated LSCache optimization plugin. Both give Hostinger a definite edge, and that’s not even mentioning its SSD storage, which outperforms HostGator’s older HDD drives.

The result is a definitive competitive edge for Hostinger. While HostGator isn’t bad, in their in-depth review, my colleague found Hostinger to be one of the fastest shared hosting providers out there.

Both hosts’ uptime guarantees are similar, with cloud hosting providing marginally better uptime promises than other types of hosting.

All in all, Hostinger offers better hardware and software – and it goes to great lengths to ensure its servers are optimized. That’s why it’s the clear winner of this section.

Hostinger is the fastest shared hosting service we’ve tested, and its uptime score was almost perfect. For the full test results, see our in-depth Hostinger review.

HostGator’s performance isn’t bad, although some users have complained about slow speeds and a bit of downtime. Read our full HostGator review to find out what went wrong.

4. Security

HostGator Has a Better Track Record

Both Hostinger and HostGator offer a free security suite to keep your sites and data safe. Each host includes a custom firewall, DDoS protection, and SSL certificates with every plan. 

These security measures are average for the shared hosting industry – it’d work fine for a basic low-traffic site, but for mission-critical projects you may wish to tighten up security further with third-party solutions. HostGator offers SiteLock for an ongoing fee, which provides automatic malware scans and protection against bot attacks.

That said, while Hostinger hasn’t always offered the best security in the past, it currently includes an impressive range of built-in security tools, at no extra fee. Hostinger includes its proprietary firewall and malware scanner on all shared hosting plans, which uses machine learning to adapt and remove potential threats on the fly.

Though both hosts offer reliable security, the fact that Hostinger doesn’t use third-party tools gives it a slight advantage in this category.

5. Support

HostGator Provides Great Support in Minutes – Hostinger Leaves You Waiting for Hours

Hostinger and HostGator both offer 24/7 support via live chat, email, and tickets. However, HostGator also offers 24/7 phone support if you prefer. Both hosts also offer extensive knowledge bases filled with tutorials and guides on the basics of web hosting.

I assessed the quality of support provided by each host by personally posing some basic questions. To initiate this process, I contacted HostGator’s live chat support.

Screenshot of HostGator live chat support
HostGator made me wait for over 10 minutes to chat with an agent
However, HostGator left me waiting for over ten minutes. That isn’t a horrendous waiting time, but it wouldn’t be very good if I’d had a critical issue that needed immediate attention.

Screenshot of Hostinger live chat support.
Hostinger’s live chat is more like a thinly-veiled ticketing system
That said, HostGator replied much more promptly than Hostinger. Upon trying to get in touch via live chat, Hostinger informed me that the average response time is “a few hours.” 

Feel free to close the chat window whenever you’d like, and you’ll still get answers to your questions through email. However, please note that this wouldn’t be considered live chat anymore. To directly engage in a conversation with one of our agents, it appears that reaching out during non-peak hours is necessary. Even in such cases, a bit of luck might be required for a successful connection.

Fortunately, both hosts provided great support – the agents politely addressed my questions and provided me with all the information I needed.

All in all, HostGator gives you access to quality support in a fraction of the time it takes with Hostinger – even though it isn’t particularly quick either.

Hostinger vs HostGator: There’s a Clear Winner

Although HostGator achieves faster support response times, this factor was insufficient to surpass Hostinger’s superior performance, security, and overall value.

Hostinger made our list of the top ten hosting providers in 2023 for a reason – it’s one of your best options. Unfortunately, it’s more difficult to recommend HostGator.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Hostinger and HostGator to make the differences clear.

Feature
Hostinger
Hostgator
Plans and Pricing
Low prices with generous resources and fast SSD
Low prices with decent resources, but outdated & slow HDD
Features
Beginner-friendly proprietary control panel; fantastic proprietary website builder and WordPress performance features
Includes the popular cPanel, with plenty of tools for developers
Performance
Superior performance and great uptime in our tests
Slow performance and some downtime in our tests
Security
Powerful, proprietay security suite
Decent security included & additional premium options
Support
2-hour wait time for live chat support
10-minute wait time for live chat support

FAQ

Which is better – Hostinger or Hostgator?

I’d have to choose Hostinger. Despite offering similarly low prices to HostGator, Hostinger offers far faster and more modern technology. Its SSD drives and LiteSpeed web servers vastly outperform HostGator’s outdated HDD and Apache web servers.

Is Hostinger good for web hosting?

Hostinger offers some of the best shared hosting plans in the industry. Not only does it come with a full suite of proprietary tools to improve performance, ease of use, and security, but it’s also one of the fastest shared hosting providers out there. When we compared Hostinger to HostGator, the former vastly outperformed the competition.

Why is Hostinger so cheap?

Hostinger offers great value for money, but such a huge number of customers means you may have to wait a few hours for a response from support during peak periods. In addition, Hostinger offers a proprietary control panel that non-techies might find easier to use, but more experienced users may prefer to pay more for the more familiar cPanel. Web hosting companies are charged licensing fees to offer cPanel to their customers, and this can drive up the price of hosting plans.

Is Hostinger better than Bluehost?

Yes. Hostinger delivers better performance at a lower price, so there’s little reason to choose Bluehost. Hostinger also made our list of the top web hosts in 2024, while Bluehost didn’t even come close.

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